


A Dance So Deadly

by peripety



Category: Sin City (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-30
Updated: 2011-05-30
Packaged: 2017-10-19 22:24:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peripety/pseuds/peripety
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On one dark and windy night two silent killers meet on the streets of Old Town</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dance So Deadly

**Author's Note:**

> No one gets eaten, but there are mentions of Kevin's taste for flesh

He knows them all: the small, dark hiding places, the nooks and crannies. The places where the tall, silent buildings rub knees together to create forgotten corners and blind alleys. Old Town is filled with such places, shadowy and silent, and Kevin knows how to wrap himself in them like a cloak, as if he is no more substantial than a shadow himself.

  


He has chosen his secret place well this night, he decides. He rests his small chin on knees bent up to his chest, feeling rather drowsy. As he crouches, unmoving, he hears the scrabble and chitter of rats scurrying past him but he pays them no attention. The creatures are canny enough to avoid his hiding place, as if sensing the presence of a predator far more deadly than they are. They skirt the shadow that shelters Kevin, scuttling quickly past and leaving him undisturbed.

He takes a deep breath into his lungs, unaware that he is smiling as he watches his angels and inhales their scent, absorbing it into himself, into his skin. The scents of sin and salvation increase whenever one of the angels stroll past Kevin’s hiding place, and he breathes it in, deeply and evenly. The scent of Old Town is an allure for him, drawing him back again and again so that he can fill up his lungs with the overriding essence of its streets.

It is the scent of sex.

Above all else the scents of sex and lust mix in with the odors of cheap perfume and car exhaust, intermingling with the smells of unpainted wood, crumbling concrete, sweat, urine, and vomit. Sometimes, when the wind is right, the smell of the river wafts up dark and stagnant and moldy, flavoring the air but never disguising the musky haze of sex.

In Old Town there is nothing of the smells of the distant farm Kevin calls home or of the surrounding countryside ringed by dense stands of tall whispering pines; or of the desert dust that sometimes blows in from across the fields and forests he roams at will. He loves the quiet and the stillness of the hills, and he has learned much from the night predators that rule the darkness of the wild country. For years, night after night, he has stolen out of his room when all others are asleep to watch the small, swift violences that mark the paths of the night predators. From them he has learned stillness and stealth, patience and swiftness.

The virtues of a hunter.

When he leaves the hills and slips into Old Town it is with the waiting stillness of a hunter, and like a hunter Kevin watches the angels unnoticed and unseen. Night after night Kevin watches from a pool of darkness as they move past never realizing they are observed. If they had paused to look into the shadows they might have caught the brief flash of reflected light off the lenses of his glasses, but they never do. Instead they hurry by, intent on ignoring the shadows and the dark, never realizing that within the shadow is their salvation, a salvation that he alone can give to them. The expiation of their sin.

  


He feels so close to them as he watches from his dark shadow. A street lamp is near enough to spill a hazy triangle of yellow light across the mouth of the narrow alley Kevin crouches in. Sometimes the angels are alone as they come into the light, sometimes a pair struts by talking and giggling to one another. The diffused halo of light gleams on bare shoulders and on the slopes of high breasts, on the shiny tumble of cascading curls. They are so tender, so soft, so sweet. He closes his eyes, shivering with remembered ecstasy, his spiritual rapture.

How beautiful they are. Soft skin and alluring scent. Secretive eyes which are the mirrors of their lost and shattered souls. And they are lost souls, Kevin knows, these fallen angels. They sell their bodies as if their value can only be judged by what men are willing to pay to thrust inside the warmth of their soft flesh. And when they do so, when they sell themselves, they do not give a thought to what matters most: their souls. But Kevin knows their value; he knows that an angel can be saved, can find salvation and restoration. They can be cleansed through him, their sinful flesh purified. He, Kevin, he alone holds the key to their redemption.

Father is so wrong to hold them in contempt. It makes Kevin uncomfortable to think this, and he shifts soundlessly in his shadow, for Father is wise and strong and he had saved Kevin. Father embraces him, accepts him as only a kind and loving Father can. Father keeps him safe. But when Father looks at the angels he sees whores. His eyes do not see as Kevin’s do. God has not granted him that grace. It has been given to Kevin to love them, all of them, quite deeply and fiercely; and although he knows he can’t, he wants – so badly – to save them all.

Sometimes that thought makes him sad, but not this night as he sits quietly in his shadow.

  


A group of angels stagger past his hiding place, shrieking with laughter. He frowns as he listens to their raucous laughter and shouted curses, immediately dismissing them from his mind. He is but one person and so he must choose wisely on whom he bestows his gift of redemption. A few minutes later another angel appears and as she pauses in the pool of light and Kevin perceives that she is the object of the other women’s derision and the catcalls that still echo faintly.

Kevin wonders what she has done to earn the scorn of her sisters and finds himself warming to her, having been the target of jeers and scorn himself in his life before Father. It is a bond he feels at once and it sends a shiver of joy – of arousal – through his body. There are tears glistening on her pretty cheeks as she sways for a moment in the light before bending down and unstrapping the ankle strap that holds the impossibly high heel on her left foot. He notices the heel is broken. After a tiny hesitation she removes the other shoe and then swivels back to her feet. She gasps and turns around so quickly her motion startles Kevin and he tenses even though he knows he isn’t what has caused her alarm.

He sees her shoulders relax, almost slump. “Oh. It’s you, Miho,” the angel speaks as into the light steps a tiny figure dressed all in black. Light glitters on the cascading stars that ornament her ears but otherwise she is colorless: a black coat, black trousers, soft black shoes on her noiseless feet. Her hair, too, is black, and even in the unflattering yellow light her face retains a stark purity, her skin clear and untouched, unlike the angel who has coated her skin with a garish layer of paint.

Miho. His mouth moves, silently echoing the word. That is her name.

  


If Miho speaks to the angel Kevin does not hear her, not even a murmur, but he listens as the angel speaks again.

“Why are you following me? You think I care what those bitches say? I’m fine. Except my shoe.” She holds up the shoes, one broken as it dangles from the studded leather ankle strap. “I hope I broke her foot when I kicked her, and not just this fucking heel.”

With that, the angel hurls the ruined shoes into the darkness of the alley and a feral cat screeches in protest as the shoes strike a garbage can with a loud clatter. The huge, angry tom reacts to the sound by tipping over the can, scattering garbage and mice and causing Kevin to spring aside to avoid the strike of the cat’s vicious claws as it leaps away in fury.

Miho freezes into stillness as her eyes follow the path of the shoes to see a dark shadow erupt into movement… _a shadow that should not move._ The feeble light from the street catches on the lenses of Kevin’s glasses for a split second before he, too freezes, but it is too late:

  


Miho’s every sense is instantly alert and alive, her hands going automatically to her swords. In Old Town the rule is to always strike first and strike deadly – there is no need for questions. Intruders are disposed like the vermin they are, and Miho is ever ready to take on that task.

Exposed, Kevin does not hesitate to react. He takes flight back into the pitch dark of the narrow, snaking alley. And while Miho’s soft-soled slippers do not make a sound Kevin knows she is after him, fleet and sure-footed. A tall chain link fence guards the back of the alley but the barrier is not enough to hold him. He is up and over it in one bound, the sole of his converse sneaker not making a sound as it strikes the top bar of the fence. He uses the momentum to push off and leap away across a street and into another twisting, foul alleyway with Miho chasing behind.

 _Can a rabbit outrun a hawk?_

 _Sometimes,_ Kevin thinks with an inner smile as he races around a corner into a dimly lit street, _sometimes even the most determined predator cannot snatch its prey up in its deadly claws._ And he possesses the skills of a hunter himself; he is not merely a meek, frightened, unsuspecting creature eluding a smarter, deadlier foe. It is anyone’s guess who will emerge the winner of this race: the hunter or the hunted.

Miho makes no more sound in passing than Kevin, moving so swiftly that she is a mere blur of movement, a shadow blown by the wind, unseen and unremarked. She keeps her eyes trained on his barely-discerned shape, catching glimpses of the white stripe on his soft-soled shoes as he races ahead of her, never close enough to strike at or grasp, always ahead of her until suddenly he is . . . not.

Miho comes to a halt in the middle of a dark, empty back street. She twirls around, her long coattails swirling as her keen eyes dart this way and that, seeking out every avenue of escape. She is astonished to consider the possibility she might have lost him – that he might have escaped her determined pursuit. A mere hint of movement has her whipping around, the deadly star in her hand flashing as it slices through the air only to impact with a harmless clatter against the brick wall where a split second before Kevin had been.

  


She flashes up after him, continuing the chase even though Kevin is no longer within her sight. She follows him as if she has somehow caught his scent, pursuing an invisible trail relentlessly across the rooftops, soaring like a bird over the yawning chasm of an alleyway as if unaware or uncaring of the long, deadly fall if her shoes slip or fail to find purchase on the slick dampness of the roof tiles.

  


Once again, though, with apparent effortless ease, Kevin leaps from the deadly path of the weapon as it whirls and flashes by him with the blaze of a shooting star. He lands with cat-like sure-footedness on the slanting tiles of the roof, grinning. Almost before Miho realizes that Kevin has reversed their game and that _he_ has been actually pursuing _her,_ Kevin turns and sprints away, leaving Miho to begin the chase anew.

They run and hide and run again and more than once within the breathless chase it is uncertain who is hunter and who is prey. They chase each other across rooftops and down streets, through alleys and over burnt-out husks of cars and trash bins and fences and walls. Kevin is exhilarated when, hiding in a shadow, he feels Miho pass near enough to brush him with a ghost-wind as she fleets past. Then he is off, out of his stillness, hot in pursuit of her until she realizes his game and reels to pursue him.

His heart is laughing in his chest as he races away, her prey once again, reveling in the chase for she is as tireless as he, and as unrelenting. He is exhilarated by this chance meeting with a foe silent, swift, and deadly. He marvels at Miho’s determination in the hunt and wonders if she feels the same singing in her blood that runs through his veins and fuels the mad beating of his heart. He has never played a game like this one before and it is a joy to him.

And then, suddenly, the chase ends.

It is unclear to Kevin which of them makes the mistake that ends the chase, but later he will blame his own insatiable curiosity about Miho. As they emerge into a street from opposite directions their running paths collide, bringing them face to face in the middle of the narrow, deserted street.

  


Like Kevin, Miho is breathing rapidly although her face does not smile as his does. She is so solemn and serious that for the first time he wonders if she feels the same joy in their game that he does. Then he decides that she must, else she would have given up the chase long before.

The street is narrow and ill-lit, the tall buildings on either side old and deserted. Windows are shattered, leaving the frames jagged with shards of broken glass. Doorways yawn darkly open on the bleak facades. Only the street lamp at the far end of the empty avenue casts a feeble light, a second is broken and a third flickers and fades like an uneven strobe. Light filters down from the full moon in the cloud-tossed sky, casting sharply defined shadows across the broken concrete. A wayward breeze stirs the scattered refuse that litters the street, eddying the trash into piles until a stronger gust comes along and flings the debris free again in all directions.

Likewise, the wind ruffles the long silk of Miho’s hair, and she tosses her head back, her black eyes never leaving Kevin’s face. Their game is not over. There is another part to be played, even more deadly in its intent. Kevin barely hears the hiss of the steel blades as they leave their sheaths, but bleached moonlight streaks from hilt to tip, glinting on the deadly Katana swords held in the slender strength of Miho’s skilled hands. They slice through the air with efficient purpose as Miho steps toward Kevin. He does not move but merely stands, watches, coiled with tight energy. His eyes are locked with hers as she advances with the blades swirling about her.

She strikes.

 _And misses._

Miho is stunned.

Never, never has an opponent eluded the cut of her blades. Never has she met a foe who can move as swiftly and silently as she does, herself. Her black eyes widen, then narrow, her tiny face settling even deeper into lines of quiet concentration.

Kevin dodges the slicing arc of the swords and then he neither flees nor strikes back. He merely settles back into that taut watching-and-waiting silence, a soft smile on the pout of his beautiful, tenderly-shaped mouth. Had he been bladed, Miho later realized with a chill, he could have killed her in that moment of surprise. But he does no such thing. He stands still, silent, watching, smiling.

  


_And yet she does._

Kevin slips easily under Miho’s next killing arc…and the next…and the next. He is utterly centered within the taut agility of his body. Every movement he makes is spare and accurate as he twists and bends to evade the weapons. The blades move so fast, almost faster than the eye can see and yet he is always able to anticipate their path and slip away from them.

Advance. Retreat. Feint. Thrust. Their combat is as intimate as a dance, as if they had practiced and rehearsed for hour upon hour until their movements became aligned and coordinated and completely in tune. There is grace in every leap and step they take, a rhythm underlying each seemingly effortless motion.

They are equal in height, equal in grace, equal in the skills needed to kill; matched opponents whose bodies rival one another for agility and speed and whose minds and spirits match in their will to survive. Not for a moment does Miho relent or hesitate or cease her relentless pursuit of her quarry. And not for a moment does Kevin lose his concentration or anticipation of every strike Miho makes.

Miho grows breathless watching Kevin dance effortlessly out of the way of the cut of her swords. Her mind is as disciplined as her body and yet she is distracted time and again by the sight of his lithe, athletic grace and agility. When she strikes high he ducks and spins and twists. When she strikes low he leaps high, so high and light, as if he might fly onto the back of the wind and ride it over the tops of the buildings. And never do her blades kiss flesh; never does Miho blood her opponent.

Miho is barely able to hear the faint labor of Kevin’s breathing as he easily eludes every slashing cut she makes. The steel blades whistling through the air make more sound than he does and she redoubles her effort, increasing the pace of her attack, intensifying the driving force of her movements. The blades sing as she leaps and twirls and slices with the razor-sharp implements. Her small, tight body is as graceful as his is, feather-light and flexible.

  


When their duel take them under the working street light Miho can even more clearly see the faint smile on Kevin’s softly curved mouth. He uses the pole to spin and leap away from her determined assault, grinning, alight with sheer joy as he moves in this exuberant and deadly dance. There is no sign that he sees this is a life-and-death challenge. His mouth parts for a moment and Miho has the impression of laughter though not a sound escapes his lips other than the misty pant of his breath.

 _Laughing!_

Into one small, incredulous corner of Miho’s mind flashes the thought – _he is laughing!_ For a moment the very idea astonishes her, that he could be joyous in the midst of this death match.

And yet, came her next thought an instant later, is that not exactly what she is feeling: a singing that is in her blood and in her heart, an elation at meeting an opponent whose skills match hers in every way? This incredible thought causes her perilous blades to falter and, ironically, it is at that moment that she at last bloods her opponent.

Both Kevin and Miho freeze into a still tableau, watching as a thin red line appears on the back of Kevin’s left hand. Almost without thought he raises his hand slowly to his mouth and his lips close over the glancing wound, sucking at the shallow trickling cut, the familiar taste of blood rich and metallic on his tongue.

His eyes meet hers above the curl of his wounded hand.

They are both winded, breathing heavily, muscles and tendons trembling with a mixture of heated energy and exhaustion, racehorses at the end of a grueling race whose tireless hearts still desire to run on.

Dawn is approaching, the final dark hour fading as the sun laps at the horizon, though this narrow, long-forgotten back street remains deep with shadows. This battle will have no victor, Miho realizes, even if she pursues her opponent down every twisted street of Old Town and into the distant hills. They are too evenly matched in speed and agility and the determined will to survive.

And, even if she could slay him there is a tiny, unacknowledged part of her does not want to kill him, this slender wraith who has appeared out of night shadows with brilliant blue eyes gleaming. His taut body is as fast and quick as her own, and it seems almost unthinkable to still its energy, to extinguish the light that glows in eyes blue as the summer sky.

Miho slides the blades home. Her feet come together as she stiffens and tightens her stance before bringing her palms together and bowing low and formally to the opponent who has eluded the slice of her swords. He has perhaps not bested her, but he has matched her and she honors that. Perhaps they will meet again one day and find a clearer victory or defeat.

Kevin regards her gesture with curiosity, his head tilted to one side. His hands come away from his mouth so he can precisely mimic her honorific. As Kevin straightens Miho turns and runs, flashing swiftly out of sight, gone as silently as she had appeared.

As she runs Miho wonders, her heart strangely light and free, if he spoke at last or if the final sound she heard had been the mere musical whisper of the wind.

 _“Miho.”_

Turning, his heart still flooded with joy and silent laughter, Kevin turns and races away from Old Town and back to the wild, free hills.


End file.
